Hi, so here is another chapter and I am going to make this note small and sweet and let you get on with the reading.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

And as always imagine the dialogue with a Liverpool accent.

Again some events in this story might not mash up with the correct episodes. So just keep that in mind.

Glory Days

Chapter 6-Enemies

Isla and an old school girl enemy (whose father is a frenemy of Joey's) comes onto the scene and Isla meets someone who is familiar but not. Also Joey tries (with various success) to take Martina on a date. Again slightly smaller filler chapter.

"Sweetheart"

Oh God he was back.

"Mr Boswell" she said mentally counting up the aspirin she had in her bag and wondering if it was possible that it was enough to slide into the oblivion of a world without the Boswell's.

"What can I do for you today? Another heating crisis? Your sister ran out of false nails? Which one of your brothers has had another career change? Or…don't tell me, Grandad has another medical ailment that needs immediate treating? What's it this time…that flesh eating virus running rampant across America?"

Joey Boswell at his best smiled and said nothing for a second. Martina folded her hands over her paperwork and waited. Sometimes it was easy to wait for the Boswell's to come to the conclusion themselves. They were not what one would call quiet and demure by any stretch of the imagination. Sooner or later he would open his mouth and the excuses and the explanations would fly out and Martina would get the opportunity to douse it with every legal hosepipe she had.

Was it sad that this was a rather happy day for her? The back and forth with Joey Boswell broke up the tedium and if she was being honest she was really being to enjoy herself.

What that said about her she dreaded to think.

"Would you like to go out on a date with me?"

Martina felt her jaw drop. If this was Joey Boswell's moment to shine he had took it with open arms. He had completely knocked her backwards and for a second she could only gape at him as if he had told her he and his family had decided to go respectable and this would be his last visit to the DHSS. Or perhaps that he and his family had been found out and would all be carted off to jail. Both had been daydreams of hers for a long time and she would be damned if she didn't get the opportunity to see them come to fruition.

This however was something completely radical.

Perhaps this was his plan, lull her into a false sense of security and ask for something so completely outrageous that she, lulled by this false sense of security wouldn't do anything but accept it—oh God they weren't moving into a third house were they? Kelsall Street was already the stuff of legend at the top office one more thing and they would send the Queen down to mark it as a monument to national history.

Martina had not been joking when she had mentioned the tour buses they put Head Office on. Most had to see or meet the Boswell's to believe what they were saying about them was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

She realised that Joey Boswell was still watching her with that cocky smile as if he knew what she was thinking and what her response was going to be and she realised that it was not going to deter him from asking her again and again. She knew this man like the back of her hand. She knew what he was thinking and what he was smiling about—actually how much she knew about him was quite frankly embarrassing. What she felt about him was even worse and she was not going to let that out the bag even under pain of death.

"Is this a chance to butter me up before you ask for something?"

"Now would I do such a thing?"

"You know you would Mr Boswell. I wouldn't put it past you to try and charm the Queen Mother at the Royal Varity show if it got you the opportunity to finger up one of those diamond tiara's"

"Harsh sweetheart. Besides I would not be the Boswell that the Queen Mum would have to worry about. Jack would be too shy to speak, Aveline would do nothing but speak, Adrian would wax poetic about usual facts and Billy would just…well Billy would just break everything"

Martina had to concede the point.

"And" Joey Boswell said now he was on a roll. "Can you imagine Isla at the palace. Christ she's be arrested before we were even off the ground for pilfering the Queen's corgi's"

Martina had to concede that point as well though she was not going to admit it.

"Get to the point Mr Boswell"

"Alright, the point is I would like to take you to dinner. And I don't plan on taking no for an answer sweetheart. So…shall we say eight o clock? Italian? My treat?"

Martina highly doubted it was his treat. The money that he would spend on this meal would have no doubt been the pile of cash she gave him only last week when he had sung a song about his mother's washing line collapsing in the garden and her deep eternal shame at having no clean clothes.

"I thought you were too skint to pay for fancy meals Mr Boswell?"

"We've all got to eat sweetheart. Nothing any of us can do in the big dangerous place that is this world if we don't eat and drink and find a way to survive. Company does that to a person"

Martina could feel the headache. She could just feel it and instead of painkillers she wanted wine. Maybe she could do and just order the most expensive thing on the menu and make him pay for it. Petty revenge for what he had put her through.

But as she soon as she had that nice thought she knew it couldn't be. As much as this man intrigued her she was not in the habit of giving up her hard won power to charmers and rogues. And Joey Boswell was the chief charmer and rogue of the lot. He was the very definition of men that mothers warned their daughters about when they were old enough to have sex.

And now she had to end this conversation before she thought about something even more inappropriate (if not pleasant) which was sex with—

No she had to stop it. Cut the head off the snake.

Now.

"Not a chance in hell Mr Boswell. We're enemies you know?"

Which was not what she really wanted to know—she would much rather know was he serious—but she thought it got the point across quite nicely.

Joey Boswell let out a slow smile and shrugged.

"No, I don't know, and I certainly wouldn't say so but some you lose, some you don't. Don't worry I will be back again"

Martina watched him go aware for a second that he had not asked for anything other than her company. It was strange…she was not used to people asking for that rather than for the money that they needed to survive. She was not used to being handled with kid gloves rather than with swear words and a snarl.

Damn him.

And damn her for thinking about accepting.

And damn her for being pleased that he was probably going to come back and ask again.

Isla had been sat reading under the tree in the school playground when she saw—or rather felt—someone standing over her. She looked up and felt her eyes roll almost automatically. As Uncle Adrian said whenever he was around Uncle Billy it was natural when around the presence of an idiot. Uncle Billy would always choose that moment to stand and shout something but Isla found it was more funny when Uncle Billy did it.

There was only ten years between the two of them and Uncle Billy thought things like that were funny. He always pulled her into her lap when she was small and he was totally unconcerned with what anyone other than Julie thought about him. But she was getting ahead of herself.

There were more pressing things to deal with now.

Like the return of an enemy.

Alexandra Yizzel, known as Alex by anyone who she liked and Lexi by Isla simply because they couldn't stand each other was standing there. Isla took note of the fur bag and the hat she was wearing that was edged in the same animal mess. Isla sent a brief prayer up to the poor rabbit that had probably been skinned to make that bag and that hat and put on her most devilish smile. It was the smile (according to Uncle Jack) that got her whatever she wanted simply because she could look as innocent as a baby animal and as deadly as the Mama Bear coming out of the woods to protect it's own.

Sometimes it wasn't just Uncle Adrian who became a poet over the dinner table.

Sometimes it was the rest of them too. They all had their moments. Perhaps that was why Isla loved them so much.

And she did. She really did.

"Hello Isla"

"Hello Lexi"

"Don't call me—oh fuck you demon scrounger"

"Your Daddy know you speak with that mouth? Or your Mummy?"

"Least my Mummy sticks around. Unlike yours. What's it been now three years?"

"Yeah, well at least my Mummy doesn't go around playing doctors and nurses with half of my Dad's mates. The general medical world and all the sailors in the port."

"At least we don't scrounge."

"At least we don't skin little animals to make clothes or use blackmail or threaten people's grandad's"

"My grandad's not a binman"

"Neither's mine."

Lexi blinked and Isla enjoyed the sight of her arch-enemy until death caught on the surprise.

"He's is I've seen him?"

"That's Freddie. He's not what you'd call a grandad. Just mainly shouts a lot"

"Hmm" Lexi said looking rather pensive. Well as pensive as a six year old could be as she mulled over these changes of events. It was little things such as this that kept the rivalry alive. After all Isla no longer mentioned Lexie's uncle after he was caught making several spare parts for several safes that made up the banks of England and Scotland. Sometimes the two six year olds who declared they were enemies until death had to have some brief, brief, moments of civi…civil…ah Uncle Adrian would have known what she was taking about. Either way Isla supposed they could upon occasion make a small stab at playing nice.

"I suppose that's ok. But your Dad…"

"Lexi we have an agreement remember? My Dad, Your Dad, my actual grandad and your Uncle"

"Oh yeah, I forget sometimes. The desire to utterly obliterate you off the face of the Earth gets to me you know?"

Isla did know.

She knew intimately.

She nodded her agreement.

They did have an agreement since that memorable incident at Christmas when they had both brought up their Dad's in an argument and it had ended up with them fighting like two cats in a small basket and rather viciously to boot. Isla had come home with a scratch all down her face, a split lip and some bruised knuckles and she knew for a fact that Lexi had gotten a black eye and a punch to the gut that had made her double over with pain just as much as it had when Isla had punched her and felt it reverberate through her hand.

She'd gotten a lecture about fighting from her Dad, a lecture of morality from her Grandma, a lecture on the way society was hanging by a thread from Uncle Adrian and some fighting lessons from Uncle Jack in which Grandad had sat on his chair at the front of the house waving his stick whenever Uncle Jack was doing something wrong.

"No…no…she has to crush them. Grab them by the eye and drag it out if you have too. In my day we did real fighting not this wishy-washy, nampy-pampy thing that we do now. If Isla's going to fight then she's going to have to learn to kill"

That had effectively put an end to the fighting lessons and her Dad had gone and looked up mental ailments in the big book of 'What Can You Claim For?' that the DHSS had outside their doors.

But back to the present thing.

"Fine…well…I guess I'll see you around. Loathe you Boswell"

"Hate every second of being in the same air space as you Yizzel"

She flounced off and Isla looked at Yizzel's mate.

"You know" the other girl said slowly as if it the thought was just coming to her.

"You and her could be good friends if you tried. You don't always have to be enemies"

And then she too turned and ambled away. Isla scowled and turned back to her book before she could shout back that yes, yes they did have to be enemies.

She was not going to admit that Yizzel's mate had a point.

Not now. Not ever.

And there you go. See you next time.

Next Chapter-Lilo-Lil and Nellie Boswell get into a fight and Isla's suspicions she is being watched sees her run in with someone familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time.